


But

by honestgrins



Series: To Rely on the Kindness of Strangers [4]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Cheating, F/M, Gray area, just FYI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestgrins/pseuds/honestgrins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Caroline is about to marry Tyler, but Klaus demands her honesty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But

"What am I doing?" Caroline's eyes were wide in alarm, not a whit of the hazy pleasure he had hoped to see when they finally finished their encounter. "I'm getting married tomorrow," she whispered, horrified.

Klaus stiffened in his repose, though his hand continued to stroke up and down her naked back. "Are you," he asked softly. "Is that all this was? Goodbye?"

Caroline looked pained as she reached for the sheet to cover herself. "No- I don't know," she corrected. "What am I supposed to tell everyone?"

He shrugged, sitting up. "Tell them the truth."

* * *

_**Five Years Earlier** _

_"Kol, you can stop telling me all the bad stories about your brother," Caroline sighed, exasperated with her friend's attempts. "It's one date that he earned, fair and square."_

_Kol groaned as he sprawled on her couch, watching her put in the dangly earrings she had vacillated over. "A date you're getting dolled up for, that he snookered you into with bad intel," he insisted. "I'm telling you, Caroline, Nik doesn't do serious."_

_"A fact he all but begged me to overlook in favor of giving him a chance to prove that reputation wrong," she pointed out. "He brought me daisies, coffees, my newspaper. He put in the time just to warm me up to the idea of dating him, and I'm inclined to try. I love you, but you don't get a vote."_

_"You'll regret this," Kol sighed._

_"Even if I do," Caroline said with a shrug, "it's my mistake to make. Who knows? Klaus could turn out to be the love of my life."_

* * *

Caroline scoffed. "What truth? That I panicked at my rehearsal dinner and fought with my fiancé, only to fall into bed with my ex, who shouldn't have been there anyway?"

"I was technically invited," Klaus said, scratching his chin. This wasn't how he wanted their reunion to go. Her regret cast a dark shadow over their brief interlude.

Pulling at her curls nervously, Caroline glared at Klaus. "Being Kol's plus-one does not count as being invited," she clarified. "Why did you even come?"

Her voice was a little breathless, clearly unsure of what his presence meant.

Klaus reached up to gently tease her lip out from between her teeth, hating that she could be insecure with him when he was naked in her bed.

"I needed to know if you were happy."

* * *

_**Four Years Earlier** _

_"Klaus, are you home," Caroline called, letting herself into his apartment. "You haven't answered my texts or calls in days."_

_She couldn't hear him, but Caroline didn't know where else he would go since she had already checked his studio. "Klaus," she called as she walked into his bedroom._

_Curls askew and drool hanging from his lip, Klaus was sprawled across his bed._

_Caroline's heart ached at the image, knowing that he was killing himself to finally open his gallery. He had been distant for the last couple of months, so focused on his goal. She couldn't blame him for his efforts, but she also hated that he left himself so little time for her._

_"Klaus," she whispered, snuggling into him._

_He grumbled sleepily, only to wrap his arms around her and pull her in tight. "Shh," he shushed, refusing to open his eyes. "Sleep now, talk later."_

_Caroline smiled wanly. She enjoyed the warmth of him, but they so rarely got to the "talk later" anymore._

* * *

"What's happy," Caroline huffed. "I was planning a future with Tyler, and I screwed you instead."

"We were happy," he whispered. "We had a future."

Caroline wiped a stray tear from her eye. " _Had_  a future," she clarified.

* * *

_**Three Years Earlier** _

_"I can't do this anymore," Caroline cried, the ache throbbing in her chest. "I love you, and I want you to succeed. But, I can't be in half of a relationship."_

_"You don't mean that, sweetheart," Klaus pleaded, grabbing for her suitcase before she could leave his apartment. "I know I've canceled a date or two, but once the gall-"_

_"Do you realize," she interrupted, "that you've been telling me the 'once the gallery gets on its feet' story for months now? That I've been waiting for months to feel like my boyfriend has time for me? Klaus, I won't wait for my life to happen."_

_She turned to go, and Klaus felt frozen. The fight had left him, just like Caroline chose to._

* * *

"You're the one that left, love," he said softly, trying to swallow the painful memories down. "In a cruel twist of fate, I was the one left waiting."

"For what," she asked, incredulous.

"For you," he answered. "Even when that moron came into the picture, I had to believe that we would find our way back to each other."

* * *

_**Two Years Earlier** _

_"Who's that?"_

_Kol sighed, dramatically dropping his head onto the bar top. "I hate that you no longer invite me for drinks just to have drinks with your brother," he whined into the polished wood. "Caroline's a tasty little thing, I'm sure, but there are better topics of conversation."_

_Klaus growled into his scotch, though his eyes never left the blonde playing pool with a clean-cut fellow. He had hardly been celibate since their breakup, his mates often encouraging him to go home with a beautiful woman at the end of a night._

_But Caroline's opponent didn't look like a fling, especially with how comfortable he looked in lightly smacking her hip as she passed by._

_"Brother," he asked more softly, though still in earnest. His first glimpse of Caroline in months, and she was getting cozy with another man. "Who is he?"_

_Looking up, Kol's expression softened. "That's Tyler Lockwood, the mayor's son," he finally answered. "He's been wooing her for a while now, but she only officially started seeing him a couple months ago."_

_Klaus stared down into his glass, eyes burning at the thought of someone else wooing her like he had once done._

* * *

"So much faith," Caroline muttered, shifting on the bed.

"Just love," Klaus insisted as he reached for her hand. "Caroline, do you love him?"

* * *

_**One Year Earlier** _

_She was far too drunk, and not happily. It was supposed to be a celebration._

_"Did I make a mistake," she asked Kol, who was surprising morose as he sipped champagne. "Should I not have said yes?"_

_The glittery shine of her diamond engagement ring had worn off in the week since the proposal, and she felt hollow._

_"Darling, you know better than to ask me that," he sighed, taking her glass away from her. "I've told you to call him yourself and get the answers you're looking for."_

_"Does he know?"_

_Her voice was small, too small._

_"For two people so in love, you're so damn stubborn," he muttered._

_Caroline shook her head, her breathing starting to accelerate. "And even with that love, we couldn't make it work? It would be a mistake to throw away a good relationship for one that all the love in the world couldn't fix."_

_Kol looked away, tired of watching them piss away their feelings out of fear. Worse, they never listened to him. He would be the best relationship counselor in the world, he just knew it._

_Damn them for ignoring that._

* * *

She looked up at him, eyes wide. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to be honest with me," Klaus pleaded, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. "If you can honestly tell me that you love him, that you're happy with him, I'll walk away and never come back."

Tears filled her eyes as her entire body shook.

Worried, Klaus reached out. "Caroli-"

She cut him off with a kiss, desperate and teary.

He pulled back, wiping at her cheeks. "Love," he asked.

"I'm tired of waiting for my life to happen," she said.

Her words echoed in his mind from their breakup, and he prepared himself for the worst.

"Calling off this wedding might be the biggest mistake of my life," she said, steeling herself. "But, it's my mistake to make. And if I'm making it with you, then it really doesn't feel like a mistake."

"Are you-"

She cut him off again with another, deeper kiss. "I was able to walk away from Tyler tonight, and I came straight to you," she whispered. "That tells me everything I need to know."

* * *

When Kol hadn't heard from Caroline after the blowout at the rehearsal dinner, he figured she had called Bonnie to drink away her wedding jitters. When he overheard Tyler badmouthing his bride-to-be over too many beers with his groomsmen, he threw a solid punch into the asshat's jaw.

When he let himself into Caroline's apartment to make sure she was alive, though, he got more than an eyeful of his brother's bare ass as he cuddled Caroline herself.

"Oh, bloody hell!"


End file.
